Thursday, July 30, 2015

Battleground WWII at Historicon - Buchholz Station

So this year saw the return of Stan, who moved to Colorado a few years back. It was good to see him and catch up on news. Several regulars were absent this year. Hopefully we'll see them around the table again soon.

For Historicon 2015, I revived my adaption of an old ASL scenario - Buchholz Station:

"The opening moves of the Battle of the Bulge centered around seizing key road junctions. One such place was near the village of Buchholz. A unit of the German 27th Fusilier Regiment moving quickly through the morning fog stumbles into an American unit eating chow. Being the Division reserve, the Americans were unaware that the Germans had penetrated so deeply."

The American's had to send half of their troops toward the chow line. They had to continue rotating through the line until all the troops had "eaten" or until the enemy was spotted. The heavy fog made spotting twice as difficult as normal (measure the range, then double it before checking the spotting chart).

The set-up from the point of view of the Germans

The unit XO set-up the chow line across the field and waited for the troops to arrive for their meal of slightly green colored eggs and SOS.

The chow line is open for business

Here comes the first of the morning's guests as the squads start sending troops to chow

The American's hadn't even reached the chow line before the Germans started their attack. If only they had waited another turn or so......

The Germans have taken the old train station and advance along the railroad

The Germans attacked with 2/3'd of their forces along the abandoned railroad and 1/3 along the road. The railroad forces moved methodically (i.e. slowly) and eventually overcame the American resistance and captured the railroad underpass.

The American's defending the road approach whittled the Germans down to just a couple troops by the end of the game.

As usual, once the game got going, I forgot to take more pictures. I'll have to work on that in the future.